Indian villagers evicted for dam
Police have begun evicting villagers opposed to the giant dam on the Narmada River in central India. More than 22,000 villagers have vowed to drown in the rising waters rather than leave their homes.
On June 14, police brutally beat a 17-year-old woman as they demolished her home around her. In Bombay, green activist and leader of the Save the Narmada Movement (NBA) Medha Patkar entered her third week on hunger strike in protest against the dam project. She said she would continue her fast until the government announces a full-scale review.
The US$4.5 billion project will devastate a huge area. The partly built Sardar Sarovar Dam wall stands 61 metres high and is the first of 30 big, 135 medium and 3000 small dams planned under India's ambitious Narmada Valley scheme.
NBA activists and villagers attempted a sit-in protest in the village of Manibeli, the first of 18 hamlets to be submerged this season, but were prevented by 800 police. Those arrested were jailed 200 kilometres away.
A house-to-house NBA survey in February found that 75% of the 30,000 households in 220 villages to be flooded did not want to leave their homes. Activists say residents are not being resettled properly. Villagers do not like their resettlement sites, which they say are denuded, with rocky soil and little water.
The project's chairman, Sanat Mehta, says the dam is the only way to provide drinking water to drought-prone Gujarat and its 13 million inhabitants, but environmentalist Shekhar Singh says the irrigation canals are badly planned and doubts if the arid regions will get any water.
Singh says most of it will be used up in cities, Gujarat's industrial belt and in water-intensive sugarcane farms.
A World Bank loan for the project was
cancelled because authorities were unable to meet resettlement and environmental standards set by the bank.